3DS Max 2013 Grid Align
polycounter
Hi guys. At work, I use a program called Creator (by Presagis) which is heavily dependent upon grids for creating geometry. It's similar to the early days of Max (I've been using it since 4.2) except that it's substantially less functional. It does shine in many areas, like the grid tools.
I'm trying to get functionality from Creator in Max - Creator has the ability to snap faces, edges, verts, etc to the grid in any direction without distorting the geometry. For example, if I have a grid angled at 45 degrees and I want the top of a box to match the 45 degree plane, I can grab the verts in Creator and click the plant tool, which matches the verts to the grid as though the XY axis were locked. No manual movement needed on my part. If I try the same thing in Max, it seems substantially more complicated. If I try to grid align, Max will distort the top of the box so that it's at a 45 degree angle (matching the grid) but it moves in XY, so it's turned into an oddly misshapen box.
I've tried 2D snap, 2.5D, 3D, and none of it will snap the verts to the grid exactly at the grid's plane - unless I've manually moved the verts of the box to match up with the grid points on X and Y. Is there something I'm overlooking, or does this antiquated software actually have a leg up on Max when it comes to grids?
I'm trying to get functionality from Creator in Max - Creator has the ability to snap faces, edges, verts, etc to the grid in any direction without distorting the geometry. For example, if I have a grid angled at 45 degrees and I want the top of a box to match the 45 degree plane, I can grab the verts in Creator and click the plant tool, which matches the verts to the grid as though the XY axis were locked. No manual movement needed on my part. If I try the same thing in Max, it seems substantially more complicated. If I try to grid align, Max will distort the top of the box so that it's at a 45 degree angle (matching the grid) but it moves in XY, so it's turned into an oddly misshapen box.
I've tried 2D snap, 2.5D, 3D, and none of it will snap the verts to the grid exactly at the grid's plane - unless I've manually moved the verts of the box to match up with the grid points on X and Y. Is there something I'm overlooking, or does this antiquated software actually have a leg up on Max when it comes to grids?
Replies
If im wrong comeback here and we'll figure it out.
I know 2 or 3 ways to do it, if i followed you correctly.
1) Select verts
2) transformation gizmo "on"
3) if its a Z up world, enter "0" in Z input ie: (x,y,z)
(the grid should be a zero in most cases).
The left side is distorted because Max apparently changes the orientation of the world pivot to match the grid. I've tried zeroing out the rotation of the grid pivot, but that doesn't do anything for me. I can't imagine that Max is incapable of planting verts to a grid while simultaneously moving them only up or down.
This, of course, means I can't move the mesh from its current position without pushing it into the geometry or making it float over it, wihch necessitates the plant feature I'm trying to figure out. ;-)
I've used autogrid before, but it won't let you plant verts. By the way, thanks for taking your time to try and help. Maybe we'll figure out how to get this running. If I can do it without needing to buy miauu's script pack, that would be lovely.
They are custom grids that you can move and rotate around in your scene and then activate to override the home grid.
Anything you draw on it will be aligned to that grid.
Yep, I've used them for quite a while now. I'll try explaining it a bit better. It's difficult for me to detail exactly how Creator does this.
Let's say that I have a basic house model. The roof slopes upward, like this:
Instead of using AutoGrid to create a chimney on top of the roof, I want to create a chimney aligned to the world grid. There's no rotation or modifying necessary, just the box on top of the roof, like so:
In Max, using grid align on the bottom verts gives me this:
In Creator, the "grid align" analogue is the plant tool. It will take any vert, face, or edge and only move it to match the grid on the Z axis. This is what Creator would give me:
While I could just create the chimney with AutoGrid and move the verts so that it's perpendicular, I'd prefer to plant the verts to the grid without the verts moving in the X or Y axis.
No I don't think there is a way to do that out of the box in max,2D snaps in the left or front viewport COULD work but would take a lot of setup and its easier to handle it another way.
There are a few different ways people would approach that in max.
Model the chimney off of the roof, such as create a plane that is aligned to the roof and then extruded upward on the Z axis.
Or someone might drop a edit poly on top of their stack, add in a few edges to define the base of the chimney and extrude a quad off of the surface of the roof to create the chimney. Then detach it and then delete edit poly to revert the roof back the way it was.
Someone might also set the chimney down into the roof so it penetrates and use the roof to boolean the chimney. Cutting it at the exact angle of the chimney.
I can see it being really helpful to join two models in that way and there might be some scripts out there that do it. This is the closest I could find in my 2min of searching, it may or may not do the trick, or there could be something better.
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/geometry-projection?ref=nf